Proper name for ' at' symbol

[senga-marie]

Is there a proper name for the ' @ ' symbol in the way that star is called an asterisk?

[stoo_pid]

generally it's known as "commercial at" but it depends on the language (for example one of the Dutch names for it is "apeklootje" which means "little monkey's testicle"

More here:
http://www.herodios.com/herron_tc/atsign.html

 

[dafyd]

arobase is another term for it - that's how it is known in french, and the word does also exist in english...

[Clanad]

The character is a combination (ligature) of a and e. In French an at sign is called petit escargot (little snail)...

[andy hughes]

I was always told it was called an 'ampasand'(sp.?) and it derived from the days of accounts ledgers, where clerks were writing long lists of prices - 'Item' at 'cost' and because of the speed at which they wrote, the 'at' eventually became a single stoke - @ and found its niche with the arrival of the Internet.

[New Forester]

Andy -- the ampersand is the "&" symbol, which is derived from "e" and "t" written together -- the Latin or French "et", meaning, er, let me see -- oh yes: "and".

 

I don't know why the "ampers".

[smudge]

Beat me to it NF, I tend to use the ampersand all the time on AB! It's naughty - but quicker!

[bernardo]

The word ampersand is derived from "and per se and"

[andy hughes]

I stand corrected - thanks to those who posted. I may have been off-beam with my noun derivation, but I'm pretty sure the origins I advised are correct.

[romko]

the 'arobase' name seems to be common  - in spanish it is called "arroba"

[kempie]

 

also known as "comat" - a contraction of the "commercial at" as described by stoo_pid

[BillyBB]

I much prefer 'Little Monkeys Testicle' the next person to ask for my email address is going to be very confused.

[madjack]

sammy squigle !!!!!!!!!!!!

[glhouser]

Monday, August 7, 2000  Article 
500-year history of Net�s special sign By Philip Willan
THE ubiquitous symbol of the Internet era communications, the @ sign used in email addresses, is actually a 500-year-old invention of Italian merchants, an Italian academic has revealed.
Giorgio Stabile, a professor of the history of science at La Sapienza University, Rome, claims to have stumbled on the earliest known example of the symbol�s use, as an indication of a measure of weight or volume.
He said the @ sign represented an amphora, a measure of capacity based on the terracotta jars used to transport grain and liquid in the ancient Mediterranean world. The first known instance of its use, he said, occurred in a letter written by a Florentine merchant on May 4, 1536.
Sent from Seville to Rome by a trader called Francesco Lapi, the document describes the arrival in Spain of three ships bearing treasure from Latin America.
"There, an amphora of wine, which is 1/13th of a barrel, is worth 70 or 80 ducats," Lapi said, representing the amphora with the now familiar symbol of an "a" wrapped in its own tail.
The Spanish word for the @ sign, arroba, also indicates a weight or measure, which was equivalent, at the end of the 16th century, to 11.3kg (25 lb) or 27.2 litres (six gallons).
"The loop around the �a� is typical of that merchant script." The professor unearthed the ancient symbol in the course of research for a visual history of the 20th century, to be published by the Treccani Encyclopedia. 
  He said the sign, known to modern Italian cybernauts as la chiocciola (the snail).